Kyiv (Spoils Of War) by by Graham Hurley

 

Kyiv (Spoils of War) by by Graham Hurley.

Published 8th July 2021 by Head of Zeus.

From the cover of the book:

A blockbuster thriller set against one of the most horrific scenes in the Second World War...

On Sunday 22nd June 1941 at 03.05, three-and-a-half million Axis troops burst into the Soviet Union along a 1,800-mile front to launch Operation Barbarossa. The southern thrust of the attack was aimed at the Caucuses and the oil fields beyond. Kyiv was the biggest city to stand in their way.

Within six weeks, the city was under siege. Surrounded by Panzers, bombed and shelled day and night, Soviet Commissar Nikita Krushchev was amongst the senior Soviet officials co-ordinating the defence. Amid his cadre of trusted personnel is British defector Bella Menzies, once with MI5, now with the NKVD, the Soviet secret police.

With the fall of the city inevitable, the Soviets plan a bloody war of terror that will extort a higher toll on the city's inhabitants than the invaders. As the noose tightens, Bella finds herself trapped, hunted by both the Russians and the Germans.

As the local saying has it: life is dangerous – no one survives it.

*********************

It's 22nd June 1941 and the Germans have launched Operation Barbarossa, the action that opens up the Eastern Front of World War II, in an attempt to occupy western Russia and exploit the rich farmland and oil fields of the Caucuses. Unable to hold back their former allies, Russian soldiers under the command of such future guiding lights as Stalin's sidekick Nikita Krushchev are unable to hold back the onslaught, and within six weeks Kiev is under siege.

Into the foray, former MI5 agent Bella Menzies, now a Russian defector working for the NKVD, finds herself ostensibly back on the same side as her former paymasters. Sent back into Russian territory, after a brief passionate sojourn with her lover, MI5 agent Tam Moncrieff, her mission is to accompany a cargo of mysterious crates headed for Kiev in the company of a Ukrainian called Ilya Glivenko known as 'The Pianist'. Although Bella has been ordered to Moscow, she decides to take a detour to Kiev with her new friend Glivenko instead, after becoming suspicious that her NKVD bosses intend her harm.

Bella finds herself caught up in the surreal world of a city under constant German bombardment. Forced to disguise herself as a local, there is no escape from the fact that the city will soon be under occupation, and her position as a double agent puts her in great danger. Kiev becomes a city of explosions, interrogation and dark deeds - and Bella finally finds out what was being transported in the mysterious crates that shared her journey back to Soviet lands.

Meanwhile, Tam Moncrieff has some adventures of his own back in Blighty. Sent to examine the contents of some sensitive files being held at the MI5 Central Registry in St Albans he discovers something of the background about his lover Bella, and becomes embroiled in at attempt to track down the identities of double agents within the British intelligence agencies. It seems it can be just as dangerous on home soil, as it can being sent to foreign climes...

Graham Hurley has conjured up one heck of a thriller in the pages of this wartime novel. Cleverly mixing fact and fiction, he runs two storylines throughout this book from the points of view of Bella and Tam, which are connected by the delicious espionage theme of double agents - and he also manages to shine the light on the terrible events that took place in Kiev, when Hitler decided to attack his former allies and provoked a return to the Russian scorched earth policy that was so effective against Napoleon Bonaparte.

There is lots to learn about what happened in Kiev in these pages, with Bella's side of the tale. Amid the well imagined scenes that have her and her new comrades trying to escape detection, there are vivid descriptions of bloody carnage and bombings that bring home the full horror of war. There are also many episodes that are very hard to read in terms of the treatment dolled out to the inhabitants of Kiev by the Nazi's, especially to our brave Bella, and of course, to anyone who happened to be Jewish. 

From Tam's side of the story we are treated to a full on spy yarn of the Le Carré kind, with very enjoyable flashes of John Buchan's The 39 Steps. It's all games within games, where the Old Boy Network holds enormous sway and can keep you above suspicion, and there are some very interesting characters that appear among our shady cast, which will be of great interest to anyone with knowledge of how events played out after the war - darling of the security services Kim Philby plays a central role here, and there is a lovely little cameo from his colleague Guy Burgess too (I recommend some Googling about The Cambridge Five if you don't know who these fellows are)!

Although this is part of the Spoils of War series, this thriller can be read as a standalone, but I really think it does help if you have some sort of handle on some of the events of this period of WWII, the years running up to it - and for full impact, the post war revelations about double agents within the British security services.

This is a cracking novel that kept me turning the pages well into the night. It is my first Graham Hurley, but will definitely not be my last - in fact, I already have a copy of Last Flight to Stalingrad lined up for my reading pleasure. Highly recommended if you love a hard-edged wartime thriller with a big slice of old-school espionage fun.

Kyiv is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Avneet Bains at Head of Zeus for sending me a hardcover copy of this book, in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Graham Hurley is the author of the acclaimed Faraday and Winter crime novels and an award-winning TV documentary maker. Two of the critically lauded series have been shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel. His thriller Finisterre, set in 1944, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.